An Unbiased Toluna Review: Is Toluna Legit? Reviews Can Be VERY Deceiving

Toluna seems really refreshing at first. You’re presented with a massive amount of survey options, they reward you at a significantly higher rate than any other well-known survey network, and you even get 500 points just for completing the sign up process. Once you dig a little deeper, you realize that momentum builds up to a series of huge letdowns. I’ll explain why in this Toluna review.

I am not an affiliate for Toluna. Many people reviewing this survey network will highly recommend it because they’re paid a commission for everyone they convince to join – I am not one of those people.

At the end of the day, Toluna is one of the most well known, but lowest paying and least legitimate survey sites available online. When you compare them to the industry leader (Swagbucks), there’s a dramatic difference in earning potential, even if spending the exact same amount of completing offers. Many users at Toluna have also complained about having their accounts suspended right before they qualified for a payout – something I’ve never seen happen at SB.

If you’re going to take the time to create an account and complete offers on any paid survey site, Swagbucks is by far the most legitimate and worthwhile site to join. Even if you spend the same amount of time completing offers, you’ll earn at least 2-4x as much in your time there, which is why we’ve reviewed them so highly.

Toluna Review Summary: Looks Can Be Very Deceiving

If you don’t have the time to read this entire review, at least read this little section.

Toluna looks very attractive early on, mainly due to their great user interface and massive amounts of rewards points for relatively quick and easy surveys. The first time you stop into the rewards center, however, you’ll notice that their point-to-redemption ratio is 30x poorer than many of their competitors. A survey network like Ipsos i-Say only requires 100 points per $1 redeemed whereas Toluna requires 3,000 points per $1 redeemed.

Every survey network I’ve reviewed has turned up unfortunately low time-to-earnings rates, usually somewhere around the equivalent of $1-$2 per hour. Because of Toluna’s remarkably high rewards redemption ratio, even though it feels like you’re accumulating points faster you’re actually accumulating them even slower and earning an even poorer hourly pay.

It’s the poorest paying survey network I’ve reviewed by far and, along with the other reasons I’ve outlined in the review below, there’s just absolutely no way I can recommend Toluna. You’d get paid much better by securing a part-time job or potentially building your own part-time internet business.

Very Quick and Easy to Create an Account

The one thing that I will say Toluna has going for it is the ease and simplicity of setting up an account. Everyone in this industry makes it easy, but Toluna makes it super easy and then rewards you with 500 points on top of that so you almost get a sense of accomplishment. Sure, that’s just the equivalent of $0.17 but you’re probably not far enough into the members’ area yet to realize that.

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So I just dove in and started taking surveys. Really quick and easy ones didn’t have any information about how long they’d take, but once you get into the higher “paying” surveys you see screens like this:

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2,500 points for a 35 minute survey sounded GREAT compared to the other networks I’ve been a member of, and I started to get pretty excited that I’d found a high-paying survey network. That was before I made my way into the Rewards Center…

The Rewards Center: Where Your Toluna Dreams Come Crashing Down

When I started poking around the Rewards Center, I was actually pretty impressed. There’s a plethora of options to choose from between sweepstakes, “gifties”, and gift card options.

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If you’re wondering what “gifties” are (I know I was) here’s a brief explanation:

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But it all came crashing down when I got to the most important section: where you can cash your points out for gift cards or cash through PayPal. This was the first time I paid attention to the redemption rate, and I was floored by how high it was:

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60,000 points for $20?! If we use the survey I posted as an example earlier (35 points for 2,500 points), I’d have to spend 14 hours to earn this $20 PayPal credit. That’s $1.43USD per hour.

And this isn’t just the case for PayPal redemption options, it applies to all of the gift card options. After noticing this, I also noticed that even their sweepstakes entries cost a minimum of 500 points per entry, whereas other survey networks require as little as 1 point per sweepstakes entry.

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After noticing this, I very quickly realized I wasn’t in the best survey network I’d ever joined, I was in the lowest paying, worst possible survey network I’ve joined so far. I high-tailed it out of there and got to work on this review to hopefully save others from this horrible experience.

Do you want to earn $0.70USD per hour? If the answer is yes, Toluna might be a good fit for you. If you’re a sane person that values their time and the answer is no, then avoid Toluna at all costs. It looks really great early on, but once you start digging you realize that your time is going to be wasted for pennies per hour here. Most people pay their kids better allowances than Toluna pays their members.

TolunaDescription: Toluna is a paid survey websites that pays almost as poorly as their overall reputation.Written by: Ian P.Rating: 1 out of 5

About the Author

I've been in internet marketing for over 10 years, and I've purchased dozens of illegitimate products for the sole purpose of evaluating them and exposing the truth about these products to anyone who's thinking about purchasing it. I never let money influence my rating of a product and your success/safety is my absolute highest priority.
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(38) comments

Ruvie
April 21, 2016

I don’t really know anything about Toluna and I’m just here to learn. What I do know though, is that the math in this article is wrong. The hourly rate is $20/14hr = $1.43/hr the reciprocal of the $0.70/hr stated in the article. Still a horrible wage.

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Toluna, like all other survey companies does not replace, nor claim to replace an hourly wage. With regards to incentives, all survey companies who offer points have a different conversion, and this cannot be accurately compared from one to the next – In the US, Toluna points equate $1 = 3,000 points. Also, the information in this review is at least a year out of date based on the images provided. If you would like to discuss any issues with us directly please feel free to contact us through the form at the bottom of our website.

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I gave it a try and agree with your article. Initially its great – until you spend hours on surveys that dont award points.
shame for these guys, I run a facebook money saving group with 14,000 members.
Ill be telling everyone of those 14000 members that its essentially wasted my time.

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You bet Toluna. Have you ever Googled “Toluna reviews”? Many, many, MANY people say it is not worth the time. The last time I checked, customer reviews are all you need if you are looking to find out information about a survey site or any product. So, I for one was going to sign up, but after ready so many bad reviews, I certainly will not waste my time on your website.

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3000 points = $1 is the most horrible pay rate I have encountered for surveys. I have been a member of Toluna for well over a year and I’d say 75% of the surveys only give you 1400 points and there are a TON that disqualify you or say it is full AFTER you have completed the ENTIRE survey (30-45 minutes). Payouts are also EXTREMELY slow. It took me forever to reach the minimum 90,000 pts to redeem $30 in paypal which is now the new minimum not $20/60,000pts. It has been 10 days and I still have not received my payment but once I do, I will no longer take surveys with Toluna. Ipoll is the best I have found! Their surveys pay money amounts and not points so you don’t have to do math to figure out what you are getting and most surveys are worth $1-1.50. Once you complete enough surveys to become a valued member, surveys start paying out more. I have completed at least 5 that were no more than 30 minutes long and paid $2.50. And when I cash out, the money is in my paypal account within 24 hours. I will be actively against Toluna from now on. It’s a waste of time!!!!!

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I had been a member of Toluna for several years. But a couple of months ago I was blocked – the reason given I was completing surveys too quickly. I appealed successfully and then got blocked again, this time because my opinions were in consistent. I had always given thoughtful and truthful answers, had never rushed through surveys without due attention and maybe my thoughts and opinions did change due to circumstances, events and timeline. The number of inconsistencies was quoted more than 2000 – that is an impossibility, I think something has gone wrong.
I am very angry about this as I enjoyed the variety of surveys and the thought that I may be shaping the future. I I wasn’t in it for the rewardsI so why should I rush my answers or give false information. I’m sure I wasnt at fault and think after being a member for over 5 years I have been badly treated.

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Gee, I would love to contact Toluna. But today, right after I completed two surveys, I got a big online page notice in my face saying “Sorry, an error has occurred. It’s us, not you!” Boy, did you ever get that right! Then I went to the Toluna home page, but I got the same web page notice. Maybe I’ve been frozen out of the website? Who knows, but it’s beginning to look just like the crummy evaluation set out on the above page.

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Please avoid this site by all means. Complete waste of time and you don’t even receive the awards! You’ll start a survey and about 10 minutes into it, it’ll redirect you and say you do not qualify. Unless you like to waste your time for nothing, I’d steer clear of this site!!

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After several years with toluna and amassing a further two PayPal vouchers of£35 each, I received an email saying due to misuse I have been blocked and my account closed and all my points forfeited. No other details explained.
I do not understand the reason behind as I have answered surveys to the best and honestly as I could.

On writing for further details and requesting my back payments, they have agreed to pay but say it will still take another 8 weeks to do so and still no information as to why my account has been closed.

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The same thing has just happened to me Lois. I have two pending paypal payouts of £35 each and they have just recently closed my account due to their inconsistencies. I have written to them twice to appeal and they have ignored my letters. I feel absolutely insulted that they doubt my integrity after being with them for several years. Knowing that they have dismissed several folk from the UK site in the past, i was very mindful of how i responded to their surveys. They have with held £70 from me, which equates to hours and hours of work. I say it’s not me who is guilty of doubtful integrity.
Iam so angry and upset that i could SCREEEEEAAAAMMMM. :-((

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This is one of the worst survey site i joined. They cant able to fulfilled to provide you with your Rewards. I ordered form the reward points 3 months ago. They send mails to wait for few more weeks and i will get my rewards, when i sent to them one follow up.. After 3 months i can no longer find my order in their system and Yes i didn’t receive anything. This is not worth an effort. Very bad site.

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I completely agree – this is a total scam and should be avoided. Even after accumulating points to receive a voucher it never arrived but the points still went from the account. The information collected is very in depth and worth a fortune at your expense. Avoid at all costs! Biggest time waster ever. Unsubscribe as soon as you can if you’ve been sucked into it.

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I’m not at all familiar with that. Swagbucks and Toluna are run by two entirely different companies. It may have been a survey section within Swagbucks, but Swagbucks on the whole is definitely not run by the same company as Toluna.

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Thank you so much for your review. I completely agree with everything that you have said. I’ve had a similar experience, I was excited when I earned a lot of points at once in Toluna, but later I found wasn’t able to get anything out of it, it took away a lot of my time, and then they took away all of my points and I had literally 0. They are a major scam!

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I’ve been with Toluna since 2010 and am not a regular survey taker. I find that most times I get screened out or as soon as I receive an email there is a survey available and open it I get a survey already full message.

However, that isn’t the biggest issue I have. I have never been informed or even noticed until I did a little review of my Rewards/Points and noticed Hundreds of Thousands of points missing because of “Reward Expired” !!! I read further and found out that they cancel your points if you don’t use them within a year of receiving them. I had no idea – I fully expected like other programs to just bank my points until I had enough to actually get something I wanted. I was actually looking forward to treating myself after all these years … thanks Toluna for being crooks.

If they did I certainly don’t recall them mentioning this when I signed up nor do they mention it when you receive your reward points. A little disclaimer at the bottom of the notification would have been helpful.

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I’ma Danish member of Toluna and i’ve never been cheated by them, Infact their surveys are some of the highest paid on the net, Not sure if same rules apply to all countries (I doubt it), But in Denmark you’re paid about 5£ for every 20.000 points you’re rewarded with (1 survey of 5000 points = 1.25£) that’s actually better than most other survey sites out there.

Sure it can take 4-6 weeks for them to pay you, But they do pay. All i can say is that Toluna.dk is honest (Might differ in other countries)

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Toluna is an absolute scam. I spent an hour every day for a couple months and when I finally had enough to cash out for a 5 dollar gift card, I never got a gift card and when I contacted Toluna, they told me to wait and be patient. It has been over 7 months and still nothing. They also logged me out of my account and kicked me out of Toluna completely. All that time and effort completely down the drain. Not to mention, the surveys are 25 minutes long for 10 cents. Thats about 25 cents per hour.

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I used toluna for two months. I was accumulating my points until I reach 90,000 points which then I would be able to exchange for just $30 dollars. Well, when I hit about 87,000 points they just wouldn’t let login to my account so I contacted them. Their response was some crap about violating their terms and that my points were forfeited. I lost all my points plus all my time. Toluna is just not worth it.

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I can only reiterate what other people have said. I have today been blackballed due to inconsistencies in my answers. They have taken back ie stollen all of my rewards. Beware, a complete fraud. Seems to me that a lot of people are not consistent where there answers. Seems to be a hell of a coincidence.

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I have to say that I’m a little confused as to why Toluna allow users to accumulate so many points then block them from the site. Surely Toluna are paid by 3rd parties to host surveys on their website – if the survey is completed to the 3rd parties standards then the user gets points and Toluna get their cut. It is for the 3rd party to decide what is acceptable, surely..?! If Toluna are withdrawing all points from a user then it HIGHLY LIKELY they are retaining their cut and essentially committing FRAUD. Those who have been blocked just before a redemption figure should contact a no-win, no-fee solicitor and let them take Toluna to the small claims court – I would…!

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Unfortunately for me, Toluna has also turned out to be a huge disappointment. Last year, I finally had enough points to get a prize, so I picked a Target gift card. It never came! It’s such a disappointment and major rip off.

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Unfortunately that’s what a lot of Toluna users have reported here and elsewhere online 🙁 I strongly recommend checking out our Swagbucks review if you haven’t yet — many members from Toluna and other survey sites that do this have found a good home there (myself included)!

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My account (of probably 10 years with no issues!) was closed when they said it was flagged due to an inaccuracy, they would keep all of my points, and would not provide anymore details.

Ironic, because I had saved up more points than ever before (for Christmas), they cancelled my account just so they don’t have to pay me what I honestly earned. Over 230,000 points! Such a dishonest thing to do. All of my surveys were accurate and honest.

No explanation offered. Because the explanation is you just want to steal the good amount of points I had saved up. Be warned of this dishonest company. At the very least cash out when you have the minimum, don’t try to save points- that is the perfect time for them to “flag” your account. Nothing more than stealing.

Also, their payments have taken longer and longer to clear- about a month. I’m guessing they are hurting financially.

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This site has taken information off my indeed job post and contacted applicants somehow representing themselves as hiring managers for my company and this is a complete lie and scam. I have contacted them and gotten no response. I would let everyone seeing this know that Toluna is a scam company and they should be hung up on or sent to spam box. Unbelievable a company can misrepresent themselves in this manner.
Renee
Practice Manager

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I read your review this afternoon, and I am inclined to agree with every single word. To be honest, though, I considered signing up to try to get at least one Amazon gift card. But when I saw that payments can take two to eight weeks to process, I was like “what the…” well, you know. Therefore I thought twice about signing up. Besides, many users have had problems with the site such as failing to receive payment, account being terminated w/o reason, etc. I shall not be the next to experience the same thing.